This is awarded to the top pair on Monday Nights between September & December each year.

CONGRATULATIONS!

(Photo to follow)

SELECTIONS

Tollemache Selection

The selection committee has picked the following team for the Tollemache Final at Brandon on February 16-17th. Michael Newman/Gary Hyett, John Holland/John Hassett, Catherine Draper/Andrew Woodcock, Alan Mould/Ollie Burgess. This is the nearly same team that qualified in November. Ollie Burgess replaces Michael Byrne who is unavailable.

Blue Point Teams

Congratulations to Neil Thomas, Nicholas Greer, John Currie and Rodney Lighton who won at Preston on Sunday 13th January, just ahead of John Holland, Alan Mould, Jackie Pye and Jeff Smith. Results are on the Preston Bridge Club web site.

The 2018 Manchester Congress

Another succesful and enjoyable congress was held at the Victoria and Albert Hotel over the weekend of 5-6th January.

Guests were welcomed from all over the UK including two teams from Norway.

David Debbage and Andrew Woodcock repeated their success of 2017 in winning the pairs

by a smidgeon ahead of Michael Byrne and Andrew Murphy (who won the Men's Pairs Trophy).

Manchester Bridge Club players were well represented and are highlighted in the honours below

This weekend sees the first weekend of the 2019 Camrose Trophy, the competition between the teams of the 'home nations', hosted by the Welsh Bridge Union in Mold, North Wales, taking place from 4th - 6th January.

The Mossop team have won the Senior Trials, which took place at West Midlands Bridge Club at the weekend, and will be representing England in the Teltscher Trophy next year. The team of David Mossop, Paul Hackett, Gunnar Hallberg, John Holland and Brian Senior finished undefeated, with the Penfold team close behind and then a large gap to third.

The Teltscher Trophy will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 5th-7th April 2019.

West opens 1 Heart and North overcalls 1NT with 17 points and a stop in Hearts. South passes because with only 7 points the chances of game are low and at pairs it is not sensible to look for borderline games.

When West rebids 2 Hearts on his attractive 6-4 shape South now doubles for takeout. How should North respond to this?

When South Doubles 2 Hearts his distribution could be any one of the five possibilities listed below:-

a) 4=1=4=4

b) 4=2=3=4

c) 4=2=4=3

d) 4=1=5=3

e) 4=1=3=5

In the case of a) it will not matter which minor suit North bids in response to the takeout double. However in examples b) to e) if North guesses wrong then the partnership will end in a 7 card fit instead of an 8 or 9 card fit. How can North ensure that the partnership end up playing in at least an 8 card fit?

The answer is that North bids 2NT which is called a Scrambling 2NT bid. North cannot be bidding 2NT to play since if his Hearts were so strong he would pass the Double for penalties. Instead the 2NT bid denies four cards in Spades and asks partner to choose the minor suit himself.

In response to the 2NT Scramble South bids 3 Diamonds which is passed out. There are no problems in the play (finessing twice in Clubs) and 10 tricks result for a score of +130.

2 Plan the Defence in the Bidding !

Board 11 Wednesday 20 August – Vulnerability White – Dealer South

KJ10x

K

KJ10xx

xxx

Q

AQJxxx

xx

109xx

xx

109xxxx

AQxx

A

A987xx

None

xx

KQJxx

North

East

South

West

4 Spades

?

1 Spade

3 Hearts

When North jumps to 4 Spades after West’s weak jump overcall in Hearts East’s initial reaction might be to bid 5 Hearts. However that would be both a lazy and a very shortsighted bid. Why is this?

East knows that it is almost certain that North South are going to play the hand in 5 Spades. Therefore he must ensure that the Defence gets off to the best start against this contract. (While it is true that East West can actually make 6 Hearts with the Diamond finesse working that is impossible to bid). Hence East should bid 5 Diamonds over 4 Spades. Now while it is theoretically possible that this might be passed out that is extremely unlikely and in any event because East West are not vulnerable there is no danger attached to this course of action because seven down undoubled in 5 Diamonds is only -350.

Over 5 Diamonds from East this will not deter South from bidding 5 Spades. However now a Diamond lead from West will result in East winning the first three tricks with the Queen and Ace of Diamonds followed by the Ace of Clubs. Already that is one down. When East now continues with a third round of Diamonds South now has a difficult decision whether to trump the third Diamond with an intermediate Spade or with the Ace. If he guesses wrong he will now go three down as he will also suffer a Club ruff at trick five. So East West get a plus score of either +100 or +300.

Note that if East bids a lazy 5 Hearts then now West might start off with the disastrous lead of the Ace of Hearts as happened at three of the eight tables in the Wednesday Duplicate. This is ruffed, trumps are drawn ending in the Dummy and a low Club to East’s bare Ace leaves East endplayed at trick five and one of the Diamond losers now goes up in smoke. Result +450.

SO IN A COMPETITIVE AUCTION YOU SHOULD ALWAYS BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A LEAD DIRECTING BID ESPECIALLY WHEN NON-VULNERABLE. Note that if East were already a passed hand that 5 Diamonds would agree Hearts.

3 Transfer starts route to slam

Board 2 Monday 25 August – Vulnerability North South – Dealer East

A

A109xx

Qxxx

Kxx

Q9xxx

QJx

Jxx

xx

K10xxx

x

10xx

J9xx

Jx

Kxxx

AKx

AQ10x

North

East

South

West

2 Diamonds

3 Spades

4 Spades

5 Hearts

Pass

Pass

Pass

Pass

Pass

1 NT

3 Hearts

4 Clubs

4 NT

6 Hearts

Pass

Pass

Pass

Pass

Only one pair bid to the almost certain small slam in Hearts on the above hand. North starts off by transferring when South opens a strong no trump. South should break the transfer because he has four trumps. He can either do this by jumping to 3 Hearts showing four trumps or an alternative treatment would be for South to bid 2 Spades which is best played as showing a small doubleton in Spades and a maximum with four Hearts. North now cuebids 3 Spades over 3 Hearts. South cuebids 4 Clubs and now North repeat cuebids in Spades to show second round control and at the same time of course it denies either first or second round control of Diamonds. That is enough for South to put in place RKCB and settle for a small slam when he discovers that the Queen of trumps is missing. There are no problems in the play and a score of +1430 results.